Date: Tue, 05 Nov 1996 20:58:29 GMT
Server: NCSA/1.5
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Last-modified: Thu, 28 Sep 1995 17:30:31 GMT
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NEXT! description
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What is NEXT!?
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The goal of the NEXT! project is to develop tools for exploratory
analysis of large, non-traditional datasets.  The name of the project
is an acronym (Non-traditional data EXploration Toolkit) that is
also a play on the fact that a major emphasis is on supporting
*sequence* data exploration.  We use the term *sequence* broadly,
and include as examples trace data, time series data from a variety 
of domains, and satellite or sensor observations.
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The NEXT! project has three main components.  First, there is a
visual data exploration tool called 
<!WA0><!WA0><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~jussi/devise/devise.html"> DEVise </A>
that supports a
paradigm called *visual queries*.  Each visual query is in essence
an abstract description of how a collection of sequence data 
is to be mapped to the user's screen.  The query serves as a
template that can be applied to any data set with the appropriate
schema, and the visual presentation can subsequently be explored
in detail by standard operations such as scrolling, zooming and
probing.
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The second component of NEXT! is a system called 
<!WA1><!WA1><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~praveen/projects/seq.html"> SEQ </A>
that supports
SQL-style queries over sequence data.  SEQ is distinguished from
standard SQL in that it provides easy (and efficient) ways to
pose queries that use the sequentiality in the data set, for
example, ``Find the N-day moving average of IBM''.  SEQ can be
used in conjunction with DeVise, with DeVise serving as a visual
browser and SEQ as a data manipulation backend.
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The third component of NEXT! is an on-going effort to investigate
novel ways of analysing large data sets (often called *data mining*).
In particular, we have developed a tool called 
<!WA2><!WA2><A HREF="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/condor/NEXT/birch.html"> BIRCH </A>
that can
effectively cluster very large data sets.
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